Dragon Ball Xenoverse — Amazing Take on DBZ!

After months of waiting, Dragon Ball Xenoverse has finally come to me through my GameFly Queue. I’ve been excited to play this game for a while now, and I’m glad that I’ve gotten to get my hands on it!

I have been a fan of Dragon Ball Z for a long time. I remember when I first heard about it. it was about 14 years ago and my cable company was finally getting a few new channels. Cartoon Network was one of them. I thought it was cool because I liked cartoons, but my neighbor and friend at the time, was really excited. I asked him why and he said it was because we can finally watch Dragon Ball Z. We started watching it together and I was hooked.

I’m not a superfan but I have always thoroughly enjoyed all things DBZ. I’ve seen almost every episode, and have played most of the games. Throughout the years since I was introduced to it I periodically watch random episodes, and just read about the universe.

I’ve been longing for a Dragon Ball game where you’re able to create your own character and progress them through a story for a long, long time. Budokai Tenkaichi 2 was a really good start, with the fact that you could customize the moves that each player had and their different levels/forms. I wasn’t able to create the look of my own character though. I thought I finally found what I was looking for with Ultimate Tenkaichi but, unfortunately, that didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped.

As you can imagine, when I heard about Dragon Ball Xenoverse, I was excited. Finally, deep character customization, and the chance to fight along side some of my favorite DBZ characters. I wasn’t able to get it right away, but I’ve finally gotten it, and it’s almost everything I’ve wanted in a Dragon Ball Z game.

Playing the Game

When you first start up the game, before you find out what it’s all about, you play as Goku and you fight a couple of different enemies. They’re a cake walk, barely attacking you, and just kind of standing around waiting to get knocked out.

I don’t know what the point of this part of the game is. There wasn’t a tutorial, no introduction, and nothing explaining afterwards. It just had you fight these three enemies, and then it let you begin the actual game.

Once you finally get into the character customization, you’ll see that it’s surprisingly deep. You aren’t able to adjust specifics such as jawline or cheekbone height, but there’s a good amount you can choose from in the various “pools” of options. You can pick a face you like, eye shape, nose shape, ear shape etc. You can also change your characters height, and size.

Once you’ve got the look of your character to your liking, you can change their outfit, and its colors. Later on in the game, you’re able to unlock more clothing options that’ll change your attributes a bit as well.

Once you’re happy with the overall look of your character, you name it, select your preferred fighting style (hand-to-hand, ranged, or balanced), and you’re ready to begin the game.

You begin with the story of what’s happening, why and how you’re there, and what it is you’re to do. This is where you’ll get the full tutorial about how to do various moves, and other things that you can do in-game.

The combat system is really good, but it isn’t perfect. There have been multiple occasions where either the camera angle is in a bad place so I can’t see what I’m doing, or I’m just punching the air because I’m not quite in the correct place to hit my opponent.

Other than that I enjoy it. You end up missing your ki blasts and super/ultimate blasts more often than you’d like, but it works in the open fighting system. You’ll dodge your enemy’s ki blasts as much, if not more, than they’ll dodge yours, so it works.

After the combat tutorial, you’ll get a more in-depth explanation about things to do in the game. One of the first things they tell you about is parallel quests. These are basically side missions that you can do to increase your ranking, and earn points to up your attributes.

You can also find items while on these quests. In the world there are various things lying around that you can pick up. You find out what they are after you’ve completed the mission, but they’re things that will help you in battle, things you can use to create items that’ll help you in battle, items you can sell for more “Zeni” (the in-game currency) etc.

These quests don’t follow any sort of story or anything, and you’ll even occasionally fight good guys. It doesn’t matter much, though, as far as the game goes other than increasing your level.

The quests aren’t always the same “defeat enemies” type mission either. A lot of time, that is the case, but sometimes you’ll have to do something, like, collect the dragon balls and bring them back to the ship while fighting off people trying to stop you. It’s a cool way that they break up the monotony of fighting.

Occasionally, once you’ve completed the quest, you’ll get a warning. If you get this, it means another, more powerful, enemy is coming to attack you. If you don’t beat this stronger enemy, you don’t lose the quest, but you will get a lower score. If you do beat them, you’ll get more XP and bonuses at the end of the fight.

When the parallel quests were first introduced, I figured they’d be helpful if you wanted to get a quick boost in rank or a couple of extra moves. I didn’t think they’d be that necessary. I was wrong though. Doing these missions is almost required if you want to be successful in the game.

One downside to the game is the fact that they don’t do a great job of explaining everything. The combat tutorial was less of a tutorial and more of an on-screen instruction manual. They showed everything that you can do in combat in three short pages.

It was a bit overwhelming and the fact that I wanted to get into the action caused me to miss a couple of things. Fortunately, you can go back and look through them again, which I had to do, but I think they could’ve done a better job at explaining things in the first place.

They also didn’t talk much about the importance of scouting your enemies and, as I mentioned earlier, the importance of the parallel quests. I knew a lot of the enemies would be stronger than me, but I figured I’d progress at a pace, just by going through the story mode, that would allow me to stay competitive.

During the first saga, I came to a point that I couldn’t get past. Initially, I chalked it up to me just playing badly. After failing the mission about 4 times, I decided to use my scouter to see what my enemy’s levels were at. I found out that they were quite a few levels ahead of me. I had to leave the mission, do some parallel quests to get my ranking up, increase my attributes and equip better moves, and then I was finally able to win. It was actually pretty easy after doing that.

Fortunately, once you die, you can leave and come back right to where you left off, so you don’t have to replay entire sagas just because you hadn’t leveled up enough for one section.

If parallel quests are the side missions, then time patrol is the main story-line. It plays out really well. It essentially follows the course of Dragon Ball Z, but with a few differences. These differences are the main point of the game. You’re there to fix history that’s been changed by time-traveling demons.

You start at the Saiyan saga and progress from there. If you watched the show, it’s pretty cool to see the events happen in the video game world, and it’s also a good refresher if you haven’t watched in a while.

A friend told me that this game was just like Destiny, but with Dragon Ball Z. He wasn’t far off, but it’s not 100% the same thing. In between missions, you are in an area where you can do things such as: interact with other NPC’s; buy and equip items, clothing, accessories etc.; find the parallel quests; play online; find master trainers and more.

Unlike in Destiny, though, other players in the world aren’t running around Toki Toki City (the “open” area that you’re in between missions). They look like NPC’s just standing around. You can only interact with them if you actively go to one of the online modes. Also, while in a mission, you aren’t going to have other players join you to help fight, as they can do in Destiny.

Master trainers are a really cool addition to this game. Occasionally, you’ll see a recognizable Z fighter in Toki Toki City. You can talk to them and, if you’re high enough level, they’ll offer to be your master. You have to complete various forms of training for them, but as you do, you’ll earn more XP and learn new moves that can be used in combat.

I’m having a ton of fun with this game so far, and I haven’t even gotten that far into it. Everything I’ve done so far, also, has been all offline. I’m excited to see what online holds and how it plays out.

Conclusion

In case it’s not painstakingly obvious, I really really like this game. A lot of that can probably be attributed to the fact that I really enjoy Dragon Ball Z, but I think you can have fun with it even if you don’t.

One day, I’d like to see a full in-depth RPG set in the Dragon Ball universe with a completely different story line, and the ability for your actions and interactions with other characters to change and shape the outcome of the game. Until that happens, though, this is as close as you can get.

The character customization, very fluid combat system, and detail put into everything makes Dragon Ball Xenoverse a joy to play. I can’t wait to continue playing and figure out everything that this game has to offer!

Thanks for reading. Let us know in the comments what you think about Xenoverse and some of your favorite and least favorite aspects. If you enjoyed this post, don’t forget to hit those share buttons below, I really appreciate it!

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